PLAN YOUR LIFE AROUND THIS
AMERICAN FOOTBALL RETURN TO DFW AT THE LONGHORN BALLROOM
Some bands spend decades chasing the record that defines them. American Football has spent the last decade proving they were never just the band that made one.
– JAMBALOO EDITORIAL TEAM
On Wednesday, September 9, the Illinois trio returns to Dallas for a night at the Longhorn Ballroom, bringing the latest chapter of one of indie music’s most unlikely second acts. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with the band taking the stage at 8.
When American Football quietly released its debut album in 1999, few could have predicted its future. The record slipped into the world with little fanfare before slowly becoming one of the most influential releases in modern alternative music. Its intricate guitar work, shifting rhythms and painfully human lyrics became a blueprint for an entire generation of musicians, even while the band itself had already called it a day.
Most reunions trade on nostalgia. American Football never really has.
Since reforming in 2014, the band has steadily built a catalog that stands alongside the record that made its name. Rather than recreate the past, Mike Kinsella, Steve Holmes and Steve Lamos have continued writing songs that reflect where life has actually taken them. Their latest release, LP4, feels less like a return than a conversation with everything that’s happened in the years since.
The record wrestles with middle age, fractured relationships, missed expectations and the strange comfort that comes from accepting uncertainty. It’s arguably the band’s most emotionally exposed work, but also one of its warmest. Even in its heaviest moments, there’s an ease to the music that feels earned rather than forced.
Following the tour for LP3, the group intended to take a short break that quietly stretched into several years. Distance, careers and everyday life made writing difficult, with early attempts over video calls never finding much momentum.
It wasn’t until the three members found themselves back together in the same room that the songs finally began to take shape again. That chemistry, according to the band, felt remarkably similar to the sessions that produced their debut all those years ago.
The result is an album that doesn’t sound interested in chasing youth. Instead, it embraces experience with remarkable honesty, finding beauty in uncertainty rather than resolution.
Dallas sits in the middle of a short Texas run, following Houston and leading into Austin, before the tour continues across the country through cities including Orlando, Charlotte and Buffalo. Select dates feature support from Brooklyn outfit Nine Perfect Lives.
Nearly three decades after their debut, American Football occupies a rare place in modern music. They’re no longer simply the band behind an iconic album. They’ve become something much harder to achieve: a band whose newest songs matter just as much as the ones people first fell in love with.
